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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Spring Break is not a break!

So Spring Break is looking more like a snow break, but I'm still managing to do a lot to prepare for the last quarter of the school year. It was really too pretty to ignore for the first day. I posted a video of it snowing at my parent's house. The break had a very calming start, but now I'm in high gear!

Reading

I'm still doing the Daily 5 in my classroom for reading groups, but I'm noticing that some of my students are struggling repeating their Word Work station so I'm planning on having a sign in sheet where they write in what day they did the activity on. I've also limited the options to only 5 choices because I think I may have had too many choices as of late which is why they may be getting confused.

I've also been checking out pinterest a lot for more options for my word work station. I'm already picking out some Spring themed word work for the first week of April. I'll try to get better about posting that once I get it in April. It's hard to keep up with when I'm teaching!

Math

I'm also still using the BUILD math model mentioned in a previous post and this is another creation for those centers. To help students work on fact families, they use the numbers on the peace signs. It's crazy how much more students enjoy practicing fact families when the numbers are on glittery neon peace signs! :)

Also, kind of with math is my new whole class behavior system. They met their cocoa compliments goal and now they are working to get 10 numbers in a row on our 100s chart. At the end of the day, if the class agrees that we had a good day then I'll have one student pull numbers to decide what number we get to color in today. I think they'll love it!

This idea is from pinterest from this blog. This time I think we'll work a classroom party-- they really enjoyed that the last time we had one.

Classroom Management

I already have behavior contracts set in place for several of my students, but I know with the end of the year in sight that I may need to change it up a bit for my students.

For most of the class I'm going to use Caught You Coupons when they follow directions for the first time. I'll give them the chance to "cash" those in for computer time at the beginning/end of the day or prize box.

I think it's important to have a prize that everyone can get (not just target behavior students) because it's important that the students see that good behavior is rewarded.

For my students who have more behavioral needs, I found a site that had so many behavior charts I was up to my neck in them! Sorry I couldn't help being cheese-tastic! :)

They have behavior sheets for all ages of students ranging from ages 3 and up. They have some for parents at home too!

I did already have some behavior sheets, but they weren't a great fit for the skills the students were working on. I love the sheets I found because they have single target behavior or multiple behavior pages. You should certainly check it out if you want to mix it up. Get the link here and look around! They have contracts, homework charts and tons more!